Joe Abercrombie - Before They Are Hanged

“Come now, General.” Cosca let his head roll back against the wall, a faint smile on his lips. “The Superior didn’t have to come to us with this. He could have stolen away in the night, and no one any the wiser. That’s what I’d have done.”

“Allow me to have scant regard for what you might have done,” sneered Vissbruck. “Our situation is critical. The land walls are lost, and with them all chance of holding out for long. The slums swarm with Gurkish soldiers. Every night we make sallies from the gates of the Upper City. We burn a ram. We kill some sentries while they sleep. But every day they bring up more equipment. Soon, perhaps, they will have cleared space down among the hovels and assembled their great catapults. Shortly thereafter, one imagines, the Upper City will come under sustained fire from incendiaries!” He stabbed an arm at the window. “They might even reach the Citadel from there! This very room may sport a boulder the size of a woodshed as a centrepiece!”

“I am well aware of our position,” snapped Glokta. The stench of panic the last few days has grown strong enough almost for the dead to smell it. “But the Arch Lector’s orders are most specific. To fight to the last man. No surrender.”

Vissbruck’s shoulders slumped. “Surrender would do no good in any case.” He got up, made a half-hearted attempt to straighten his uniform, then slowly pushed his chair under the table. Glokta almost pitied him at that moment. Probably he is deserving of pity, but I wasted all I had on Carlot dan Eider, who hardly deserved it at all.

“Allow me to offer you one piece of advice, from a man who’s seen the inside of a Gurkish prison. If the city should fall, I strongly recommend that you take your own life rather than be captured.”

General Vissbruck’s eyes widened for a moment, then he looked down at the beautiful mosaic floor, and swallowed. When he lifted his face Glokta was surprised to see a bitter smile. “This is hardly what I had in mind when I joined the army.”

Glokta tapped his ruined leg with his cane, and gave a twisted grin of his own. “I could say the same. What did Stolicus write? ‘The recruiting sergeant sells dreams but delivers nightmares?’ ”

“That would seem appropriate to the case.”

“If it’s any comfort, I doubt that my fate will be even as pleasant as yours.”

“A small one.” And Vissbruck snapped his well-polished heels together and stood to vibrating attention. He remained like that for a moment, frozen, then turned without a word for the door, soles clicking loud against the floor and dying away in the corridor outside.

Glokta looked over at Kahdia. “Regardless of what I said to the General, I would urge you to surrender the city at the earliest opportunity.”

Kahdia’s tired eyes slid up. “After all this? Now?”

Especially now. “Perhaps the Emperor will choose to be merciful. In any case, I can see little advantage for you in fighting on. As things stand, there is still something to bargain with. You might be able to get some kind of terms.”

“And that is the comfort you offer? The Emperor’s mercy?”

“That’s all I have. What did you tell me about a man lost in the desert?”

Kahdia nodded slowly. “Whatever the outcome, I would like to thank you.”

Thank me, you fool? “For what? Destroying your city and leaving you to the Emperor’s mercy?”

“For treating us with some measure of respect.”

Glokta snorted. “Respect? I thought I simply told you whatever you wanted to hear, in order to get what I needed.”

“Perhaps so. But thanks cost nothing. God go with you.”

“God will not follow where I am going,” Glokta muttered, as Kahdia shuffled slowly from the room.

Cosca grinned down his long nose. “Back to Adua, eh, Superior?”

“Back, as you say, to Adua.” Back to the House of Questions. Back to Arch Lector Sult. The thought was hardly a happy one.

“Perhaps I’ll see you there.”

“You think so?” More likely you’ll be butchered along with all the rest when the city falls. Then you’ll miss your opportunity to see me hanged.

“If I’ve learned one thing, it’s that there’s always a chance.” Cosca grinned as he pushed himself away from the wall and strutted towards the door, one hand rested jauntily on the pommel of his sword. “I hate to lose a good employer.”

“I’d hate to be lost. But prepare yourself for the possibility of disappointment. Life is full of them.” And the manner of its ending is often the greatest one of all.

“Well then. If one of us should be disappointed.” And Cosca bowed in the doorway with a theatrical flourish, the flaking gilt on his once magnificent breastplate glinting in a shaft of morning sunlight. “It has been an honour.”

Glokta sat on the bed, tonguing at his empty gums and rubbing his throbbing leg. He looked around his quarters. Or Davoust’s quarters. That’s where an old wizard terrified me in the middle of the night. That’s where I watched the city burn. That’s where I was nearly eaten by a fourteen-year-old girl. Ah, the happy memories…

He grimaced as he pushed himself up and limped over to the one box he had brought with him. And this is where I signed a receipt for one million marks, advanced by the banking house of Valint and Balk. He slid the flat leather case that Mauthis had given him out of his coat pocket. Half a million marks in polished stones, barely touched. He felt again the tugging temptation to open it, to dig his hand inside and feel that cool, hard, clicking distillation of wealth between his fingers. He resisted with an effort, bent down with a greater one, pushed some of the folded clothes aside with one hand and dug the case down under them with the other. Black, black and black. I really should get a more varied wardrobe—

“Going without saying goodbye?”

Glokta jerked violently up from his stoop and nearly vomited at a searing spasm through his back. He reached out with one arm and slammed the box lid down just in time to flop onto it before his leg buckled. Vitari was standing in the doorway, frowning over at him.

“Damn it!” he hissed, blowing spit through the gaps in his teeth with every heaving breath, left leg numb as wood, right leg cramping up with agony.

She padded into the room, narrowed eyes sliding left and right. Checking that there’s no one else here. A private interview, then. His heart was starting to beat fast as she slowly shut the door, and not just from the spasms in his leg. The key rattled in the lock. Just the two of us. How terribly exciting.

She paced silently across the carpet, her long black shadow stretching out towards him. “I thought we had a deal,” hissed out from behind her mask.

“So did I,” snapped Glokta, struggling to find a more dignified position. “Then I got a little note from Sult. He wants me back, and I think we can all guess why.”

“Not because of anything I told him.”

“So you say.”

Her eyes narrowed further, her feet padded closer. “We had a deal. I kept my end.”

“Good for you! You can console yourself with that thought when I’m floating face down in the docks in Adua and you’re stuck here, waiting for the Gurkish to break down the—oof!”

And she was on him, her weight grinding his twisted back into the box, squeezing the air from him in a ragged wheeze. There was a bright flash of metal and the rattle of a chain, her fingers slid round his neck.

“You crippled worm! I should cut your fucking throat right now!” Her knee jabbed painfully into his stomach, cold metal tickled gently at the skin on his neck, her blue eyes glared into his, flickering back and forth, glistening hard as the stones in the box under his back. My death could be moments away. Easily. He remembered watching her choke the life out of Eider. With as little care as I might squash an ant, and I, poor cripple, just as helpless as one. Perhaps he should have been gibbering with fear, but all he could think was: when was the last time I had a woman on top of me?